Neanderthal Man 'Never Walked In Northern Europe'

Historians of the Stone Age fear that they will have to rip up their theories about Neanderthal Man after doubt has been cast on the carbon dating of skeletons by a leading German anthropologist.

Work by the flamboyant Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten showed that Neanderthal Man existed in northern Europe. Calculations on skeletal remains found at Hahnofersand, near Hamburg, stated they were 36,000 years old.

Yet recent research at Oxford University's carbon-dating laboratory has suggested that they date back a mere 7,500 years. By that time, Homo sapiens was already well-established and the Neanderthals were extinct.

Chris Stringer, a Stone Age specialist and head of human origins at London's Natural History Museum, said: "What was considered a major piece of evidence showing that the Neanderthals once lived in northern Europe has fallen by the wayside. We are having to rewrite prehistory."

But Prof von Zieten, 65, the descendant of a famous 18th-century Prussian general, rejected the evidence from Oxford University last week.

"The new data from Oxford is all wrong," he told Germany's Der Spiegel. He said that the university's scientists had failed to remove shellac preservative from the specimens. As a result, the remains appeared to be much younger.

"Unfortunately, archaeologists and most anthropologists do not study physics or chemistry and therefore they cannot make judgments on carbon dating," he said. "Wrong measurements are made in all laboratories."

Prof von Zieten, who has a penchant for large Havana cigars and Porsche cars, has been considered an expert in carbon-dating techniques since the 1970s. He has tested hundreds of prehistoric bone finds from Europe and Africa over the past 30 years.

Now, however, important remains that Oxford scientists no longer believe are prehistoric include the female "Bischof-Speyer" skeleton, found near the south-west German town of Speyer with unusually good teeth. Their evidence suggests that she is 3,300 years old, not 21,300.

Another apparent misdating involved an allegedly prehistoric skull discovered near Paderborn in 1976 and considered the oldest human remain ever found in the region. Prof von Zieten dated the skull at 27,400 years old. The latest research, however, indicates that it belonged to an elderly man who died around 1750.

Germany's Herne anthropological museum, which owns the Paderborn skull, was so disturbed by the findings that it did its own tests. "We had the skull cut open and it still smelt," the museum's director, Barbara Ruschoff-Thale, said last week. "We are naturally very disappointed."

Concern about Prof von Zieten's carbon-dating estimates arose last year following a routine investigation of German prehistoric remains by the German and British anthropologists Thomas Terberger and Martin Street.

"We had decided to subject many of these finds to modern techniques to check their authenticity so we sent them to Oxford for testing," Mr Street told The Sunday Telegraph. "It was a routine examination and in no way an attempt to discredit Prof von Zieten."

In their report, though, both anthropologists described this as a "dating disaster".

The scandal engulfing Prof von Zieten goes further. Police are investigating allegations that he tried to sell 280 chimpanzee skulls from his university to buyers in America for $70,000 (£38,000).

Prof von Zieten denies the claims, saying that he legitimately obtained the skulls from a Heidelberg ethnologist in 1975. Frankfurt university last month suspended the professor from his post in the anthropology department while it runs its own inquiry.

Neandertal is near the city of Düsseldorf (middle left on the map above, between Essen and Cologne). Neanderthal is the Old German spelling.

I did the translation below from the second part of the "Spiegel-Online" article. It gives an idea of the level of controversy the German anthropologists are facing.

I am definitely not an Anthropologist, so my translation of terms or science specific descriptions may not be correct. For the purpose of just posting here I didn't want to take lot of time to study the exact terminolgy.

I hope that some of you will find it easier to figure out than 'Google' or 'Babelfish'.

........excerpted

More than anything else, however, the researcher was apparently on war-footing with his C 14 device. Protsch nevertheless scrambled to get the analysis of the noblest and most exciting anthropoid discoveries. The professor examined the Neanderthal man of Hahnöfersand in 1980. When some colleagues still had doubts, the carbon-acrobat pulled out another measurement, which had allegedly been made by his friends from California. This one was also over 35 000 years.

Astonishment gripped the guild at that time. A Neanderthal man had never been discovered so far to the north before. The Helms Museum in Hamburg rejoiced and lured many thousands of visitors. Posters show the supposed "oldest Hamburger" as a flat-nosed, powerful, forest gnome.

Now a hangover mood reigns. " Hahni", as some call him, was not a diluvial primitive, but a modern person who had hunted ducks on the Elbe during the borderline to the agriculture culture 7500 years ago. The Museum person in charge, Ralf Busch opines, "We were not amused"

The anthropologist Günter Bräuer had a long face last week, too. In learned essays he had interpreted the fossil as a robust half-breed between Neanderthal man and homo sapiens. For him, Hahni was the central piece of evidence in his "hybrid theory", which says that the two anthropoid types had sex with each other. His commentary: "Pity, I was wrong."

What a disgrace! But Bräuer excuses himself: Protsch came from the University of California ", from the smithy of experts". Moreover, his institute has been "showered with money".

Neandertaler von Hahnöfersand auf dem Plakat des Hamburger Helms-Museums: "Schade, da habe ich mich vertan"

Neanderthal from Hahnöfersand on a poster of the Hamburger Helms-Museum: "Pity, I was wrong"

........excerpted

The current doctoral candidate is no longer happy with his job, either. For two years he has been sitting on a mountain of bone remnants which originate from three to four individuals, and were discovered in the vicinity of an extinct volcano in the eastern Eifel by the Coblenz administrative offices for the preservation of historical monuments. According to Protsch they are 27 000 years old.

No one in Frankfurt wishes to believe that now. The material is in the C 14 laboratory of Kiel at present and is being examined. One of the teeth has a cavity. Just that makes one suspicious: For the nature lads from the ice age who didn't know what sugar was, that plague was rare.

In view of the many suspicious circumstances the experts are now pressing for a new analysis of the "Lady of Kelsterbach", also. It is one of the key fossils in German Stone Age lore.

In 1952 the skull had been discovered in a Hessian gravel pit. Protsch dated it, under the laboratory number Fra 5, as having an age of 31,200 years.

It seemed as if the man had again held a record bone in his hand. The remains, he reported proudly in the technical journal "Ice Age and the Present", are Europe's "oldest directly dated hominid fossil". Because the research duo Terberger and Street harbored doubts, they asked for a test speciman. But Protsch refused.

The university management is now attempting that with force . In the presence of the legal department, the janitor broke open the green safe in which the institute director stores the Fossils.

Surprise: The safe was half looted. The skull of Kelsterbach had disappeared.

"Spiegel-Online"...."Die Regeln mache ich" (2).....August 16, 2004....Matthias Schulz

Translated by longjack

It seems that the German guy was either habitually sloppy/incompetent, a fraud, or a made up his "results"

More paragraphs from the article, which suggest your assessment is correct.

........excerpted

But in reality, rumors about the professor had already been circulating for a long time. Henke admits openly: "Protschern became a synonym for fudge it."

"The man has falsified data", also says former employee Bernhard Weninger, who now heads the C 14 laboratory at the Cologne Institute for Pre- and Early History. "At the end of the eighties we examined a mass grave from the Ceramic layer", he explains. Because the tedious measuring procedure lasted too long for the boss, he simply thought up a plausible age and passed it on to the archeologists. Weninger: "We called those tricks 'mental dating'."

The Bishop of Limburg was also fobbed off in that way, says Weninger. "Around 1989 we were supposed to examine the body of a saint", he relates. He himself had begun working on determining the age of the mummy. Shortly thereafter, Protsch invited the bishop to the institute and brashly announced the results. "I wasn't any way near finished with the measuring yet."

"Spiegel-Online"....August 16, 2004....Mattias Schulz

Translated by longjack

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